Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Andrew Spence discusses meme marketing or memevertising and how using this can build your brand, get more traffic and make more sales....

Effective memes associated with a product or service, generate images, words and feelings in the brain that create a desire, meet a need or inspire action. Marketing is all about creating thoughts in people and memes have the capacity to do that most effectively.Look at this Nike meme: This meme is hard to forget and leaves a lasting impression – that’s what memes are meant to do.

...We don't need to go back hundreds of years to see examples of content marketing when the term itself didn't exist however. We - and many other agencies and in-house teams - have created videos, games, related images and other marketing material for clients since launching 7 years ago, way before somebody in skinny jeans and unnecessary spectacles felt the need to put a collective name on it other than 'PR' or 'marketing'.

Big fat greasy chip on my shoulder about the name firmly established - it's taken three paragraphs to get it all out - I wanted to explore just why even the best 'content' still needs to be 'marketed'.

Let's take this 'Our Blades Are F***ing Great' video by Dollar Shave Club, for instance....

Have you seen what’s been dubbed “the greatest car commercial ever?” If you haven’t, don’t bother looking for it on TV. It’s online . . . and it’s racking up millions of viewers. Audi’s latest spot pits the “Old Spock” (Leonard Nimoy) vs. the “New Spock” (Zachary Quinto) in a promotion for the new Audi S7. (Watch the video below.)

It’s engaging. It’s persuasive. It’s relevant. And it’s a great example of the impact and reach of video marketing. Marketers recognize videos like these play an increasingly important role in the marketing mix, yet many of us have questions about producing effective video campaigns –regardless of whether we have Audi-sized budgets or not.

How can you squeeze every ounce of value from your investment, and use video not only to inform and entertain, but also to capture leads and drive revenue?...

As you plan your campaigns, think of social media services and sites in terms of the behavior they\'re likely to provoke, and match your content accordingly....

According to a study of 18-45-year-olds conducted by The Associated Press, the average human attention span in 2012 was eight seconds. The average attention span of a goldfish is nine.As sensational as this may sound, it shouldn't really come as a surprise. One need only spend a few minutes online to see this phenomenon first-hand.

Consumers crave short-form content - it's one of the reasons that social media sites like Twitter and Facebook have done so well. We tweet within our 140-character limit, we post pithy comments to our walls, and if we're adding text commentary to Pinterest and Tumblr posts at all, it's typically very brief.

It may be Millennials and digital natives who are saddled with a reputation for seeking instant gratification, yet it seems that all of us are increasingly drawn to visuals and short videos that can be consumed in seconds flat. Social video marketing company Unruly reports that Twitter users are now sharing nine Vine videos per second, a figure that has nearly doubled since April. With a six-second limit on length, branded Vines are four times more likely to be shared than traditional video ads...